Episode 107. P-Pod.
Woo Guk-jae cleared his shaking eyes and opened his mouth.
“Our stake is exactly 51.3%. If you take over our stake, that means you can take control of it. The amount that Doosung Telecom was originally going to hand over to Doosung Telecom, including the premium for management rights, was 1 trillion won. Isn’t that a reasonable price?”
“Honestly, if there was a competitor called Doosung Telecom, I would have received that amount right away. But now, is there anyone else who wants to take over World Telecom? There is no competitor, so the amount seems too large. And back then, the buyer was a head, not me, right? How can the purchase price be the same with different buyers?”
Woo Guk-jae continued speaking with a sickly expression on his face.
“Um.. So, what do you think the price is for your company?”
“Please give me 150 billion won. If you keep going like this anyway, buyers won’t show up. Doosung Telecom must have decided to acquire Doosung Telecom because it has the advantage of being able to significantly increase its market share.
Woo Guk-jae could not easily say the word of refusal even after hearing a thief-like offer to cut 150 billion won.
“Besides, I am well aware that even after one year, you will lose 2.3 billion won in interest payments alone. The stock price will continue to fall, and if you are going to carry such a bomb, I think it would be better to just sell it at 850 billion won.”
Woo Guk-jae wrinkled his face when he realized that Jae-woon knew more than he thought.
Daemyung, a chemical company, decided to temporarily take over the 24.5% stake in World Telecom and hand it over to Doosung Telecom along with the original 26.8% stake.
Ulsan General Steel had already borrowed close to 500 billion won in loans.
As the interest burden increases as time goes by, Ulsan Steel couldn’t pull it off indefinitely.
“..I don’t know how you found out, but you know our situation quite well.”
Jaewoon replied with a smile.
“It is fundamental to investigate the negotiator. Did you come all the way here without knowing that?”
After thinking for a while, Woo Guk-jae opened his mouth.
“You’re going to spend 50 billion more. Considering the current stock value and the premium for management rights, it is a product worth 1 trillion won. If it’s about 10%, I can make an excuse that it was reduced due to circumstances, but if it’s less than that, there won’t be any left for me. If you give us 900 billion won, we will clean up the contract with Doosung Telecom and hand over 51.3% of the stake in World Telecom at once.”
Jae-Woon, who had come to think of that price, nodded his head willingly.
“good. Chairman Woo should not be in trouble because of me. We will take over it for the 900 billion you mentioned.”
“..Thanks for understanding.”
Woo Guk-jae, who had become the one to say hello, far from receiving a thank-you note even after paying 100 billion won, smiled with anger but struggled.
“What. I am a person with that kind of compassion.”
“By the way, can you raise 900 billion won from your company?”
Jaewoon nodded his head.
“..Hmm. From what I know, the company called Damoye is a solid company, but it doesn’t seem like it can mobilize a large amount of 900 billion won.”
“You don’t have to worry about that. Can you see it here? It is a deposit certificate from Daeheung Bank, which is the largest in Korea.”
As Jaune said, the deposit certificate had an amount of 1 trillion stamped on it.
Woo Guk-jae’s eyes became serious when he saw that.
“That’s great. It is an amount that even large corporations cannot easily make.”
“I was lucky. Anyway, I think this is enough to give me trust.”
Woo Guk-jae glanced at the deposit certificate and opened his mouth.
“..okay. Then when will the payment be paid?”
“I will transfer money immediately after contract.”
Woo Guk-jae nodded his head.
‘I’m glad I paid the money right away. You’ve lost 100 billion, but you better get rid of this trouble quickly, right? If you have more, you might be in a situation where you can’t even if you want to.’
“All right. Then, I will put the discussion plan I shared with Director Kang as the agenda for the board of directors. We will contact you as soon as the results are out.”
And a week later, Jaewoon received a notification that the agenda had been passed.
#Mid February.
Park Si-woong received a call while he was on his way home from work at the shopping mall.
“Siwoong-ah.”
It was his older brother, Park Jae-woo.
“Are you still at work?”
“no. I just got off work. why?”
“I just want you to come home more often. The company is not in Busan, but in Seoul, so why is it so hard to see your face?”
“Sorry, I’ve been a little busy lately.”
“What makes you so busy?”
“I had a very important job at the company. I was promoted recently.”
“okay? What is your rank now?”
“..exaggeration.”
He said in a tone that he did not understand what he said.
“exaggeration? Hey, if you come to our department store, I’ll give you a manager’s seat right away, so why are you doing that there? Do you have any weaknesses?”
“It’s not like that. Even if you get a position as a manager at a department store, it is not a position you get on your own. I hate going into my father’s back.”
“I don’t understand you. Why do we leave our department store in the top five in Korea and hang up on a small online shopping mall… It’s not that we don’t have the skills. If you can, even if you come to our department store as a manager, no one will complain that it is a parachute.”
“Don’t ignore our shopping mall. It may be smaller than my father’s department store right now, but it’ll get bigger in a few years.”
My brother snorted.
“Huh. growing up quickly. To me, that online shopping mall was just a fad at one time. Because the economy is difficult right now, there are people who buy cheap food, but that number will decrease soon. Consumers are very dissatisfied even if they show it with their own eyes and sell it, but if you only show a few photos and sell it, would it be terrifying?”
“I have a different opinion than my brother. Eventually, the future retail market will go online. There will be more and more consumers who buy the cheap taste that hyung said. Because people are basically economic beings, in the end, we have no choice but to find cheap ones.”
His tone rose as if he was frustrated.
“It’s because you don’t know human psychology well yet. If you learn a little bit about work at our department store, your eyes will be open.”
“Hyung, let’s all get together and come to the shopping mall to learn something. Don’t start with the manager like in a department store, start with the employee.”
After fighting for a while, I hung up the phone.
‘It doesn’t fit well with my brother.’
I know hyung isn’t doing that with a bad heart, but
Park Si-woong didn’t really like his brother’s attitude.
He raised his fist into the air.
“Ah-oh! When was an online shopping mall? If I had met Director Kang, I would never have said such a thing… One day, my big nose will get hurt properly. brother.”
Unlike existing products, the new MP3 player P-Pod uses a hard disk instead of a semiconductor flash memory to increase the storage capacity of MP3 files.
The durability of the hard disk was not as good as that of flash memory, so it had not passed the reliability test for 4 months.
“Chief Kim. What was the final reliability test result for the P-Pod?”
It is a test that measures how well a product can withstand harsh environments such as hot, cold, or constant impact.
Since the reliability test result is directly related to the quality, if the result is not good, the product could not go out.
President Kim said with a gloomy expression on his face.
“.. I finally passed the most challenging impact test yesterday. As a result, the final reliability test resulted in a Pass decision. Now we just have to sell it.”
“haha. Mr. Unjin Kim. You did it! You suffered.”
“..yes. I didn’t expect it to be so hard on the reliability test. In the past 4 months, I’ve been to a hard disk company longer than Hicast here. It wasn’t a bad thing because the hard disk capacity could be increased from 1G to 3G due to the unintentional lengthening of the development period.”
“It will be as rewarding as it was hard.”
“That agrees with me. In particular, after the creation of an MP3 file sharing site called Music Bada last month, requests to increase the capacity of the MP3 player have been continuously coming up on the Hicast website. Looking at that, I think that a large-capacity MP3 player like the P-Pod was developed in time. The director expected this situation and gave the order to develop the P-Pod, right?”
“I don’t know exactly, but I thought that this time would eventually come. Last year, an MP3 file sharing site called Napster already came out in the US, right? I decided that it was only a matter of time before a similar site appeared in Korea.”
President Kim nodded.
“Also. Your predictions always seem to come true. It’s amazing.”
“It’s not enough to say that, but I have a good feeling. haha.”
“Surely it is. Not only me, but all the employees of Highcast think that way. During development, there was no employee who asked why I had to use a hard disk while I was struggling. With just the fact that the director directly instructed me to do it, I was able to succeed in the end because there was an atmosphere where I had to do it of course.”
“yes. Besides, when you get good results, you give me incentives, right? In many ways, employee satisfaction is high. Perhaps because of the good news, when recruiting new employees, talented people who have graduated from prestigious universities in Seoul are also very supportive. You can see how the company is growing.”
“How much was the operating profit of Hicast last month?”
“About 7 billion.”
“Are you up again?”
“yes. The synergy with P Store, an MP3 music sales platform, has been working well, so our exports to the US have increased a lot.”
“I can’t even call Hi-Cast a small business anymore.”
“yes. It’s definitely a mid-sized company. I have no intention of doing so, but if it is listed on the KOSDAQ, the value of the stake will come out to 300 billion won.”
“Has the hi-cast already grown that big? As you said, I’m not going to go public, but it feels good. haha.”
If there was no need for investment, there was no need to go public and hand over my stake to someone else.
President Kim followed me and laughed.
“So do i. When I started this business, I had a lot of fear that it might go bankrupt, but now at least I don’t have to worry about that. haha.”
“yes. Then, the P-Pod will go into production right away, and the official release will be at the beginning of next month.”
“And there is one more thing that President Kim needs to do.”
“We are thinking of releasing this P-Pod not only in the US but also in Europe. Please contact the European distributor to negotiate.”
“Ah, do you think the P-Pod will be popular in Europe too?”
“yes. A good product tends to be recognized by consumers.”
“We already have a track record of exports to the US, so negotiations will not be difficult.”
“All right. We will prepare for that.”
#Hongin Media Conference Room.
I asked the boss Oh Chan Noon.
“Chief Jung. Are P Store sales doing well?”
“Exceeds expectations. By January of this year, cumulative sales reached $100 million.”
